December 06, 2010

Commission Nominates Nine Lawyers for D.C. Superior Court Vacancies

The White House today received the names of nine lawyers who are finalists for three vacancies on the District of Columbia Superior Court.

The D.C. Judicial Nomination Commission, which announced the nominees, said President Obama has 60 days to select an attorney to fill each vacancy. The retiring judges are Kaye Christian, Brook Hedge and Judith Retchin.

For Hedge's spot, the JNC nominated Catharine Easterly, an attorney in the special litigation division of the D.C. Public Defender Service; Assistant U.S. Attorney Teresa Howie, deputy chief of the Superior Court division; and Steven Wellner, an administrative law judge and former Kirkland & Ellis partner.

The JNC nominees for Retchin’s spot: D.C. solo practitioner Alfred Belcuore, who has been in private practice for more than 35 years and who teaches a trial practice course at the Georgetown University Law Center; Rainey Brandt, special counsel to Chief Judge Lee Satterfield of D.C. Superior Court; and Jennifer Di Toro, legal director of the Children’s Law Center in the District and a former public defender.

For the vacancy created by Christian’s retirement, the JNC offered up these three names: Donna Murphy, a Justice Department lawyer in the Civil Rights Division for more than 20 years who now is a supervisor in the housing and civil enforcement section; Gary Thompson, a Reed Smith partner who specializes in insurance law; and Yvonne Williams, counsel at Miller & Chevalier who focuses on employment and employee benefits matters.

The seven-member JNC includes Venable’s Karl Racine; Grace Speights of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius; Dickstein Shapiro’s Woody Peterson; and Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. For more background on the nine nominees, click here.